Cisco Systems is extending the functionality of its Quad enterprise social networking (ESN) software through integration with Microsoft Office applications and with email clients, including Microsoft Outlook, the company is announcing on Tuesday.Cisco is also re-branding the ESN software, dropping its Quad name and calling it WebEx Social, as the company seeks to give its social collaboration products a uniform brand using the WebEx name."Creating a consistent [collaboration] brand and experience under WebEx is a necessary thing for them to do," said industry analyst Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research.Cisco is also placing under the WebEx umbrella its Callway clo[...]

3D printing company Shapeways today announced that it has raised a $6.2 million Series B funding round led by New York-based Lux Capital, with participation by existing investors Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures. Shapeways also announced that it has now printed over 1 million 3D objects and currently powers over 6,000 shops on its platform. The service now has over 150,000 members (up from about 100,000 last November) who can upload and print their own 3D creations through the site and sell them to other users[...]

The assessment that the MacBook Pro with Retina Display is the “least repairable laptop ever” is holding true. The repair experts at iFixit have torn down the Retina display and found it ridiculously fragile.Despite calling the Retina display an “engineering marvel,” the iFixit team actually broke the display when trying to take it apart. Instead of putting a LCD panel between a back case and a front piece of glass, Apple has used the MacBook’s aluminum case as the frame for the Retina panel and the LCD as the front glass. Impressively, Apple has packed in four times as many pixels into a slightly thinner display, but you better be careful not to drop it.[...]

Fritz Lanman was doing just fine as Microsoft’s senior director of corporate strategy and acquisitions and also had a nice budding angel investing career with investments in Square and Pinterest. But 18 months ago, he quit Microsoft to tackle a big problem that he felt had yet to be fixed in a satisfying way. Lanman was frustrated by the state of recommendations, which relied too heavily on stranger reviews or complicated algorithms and wasn’t well served on mobile.The result of Lanman’s work is Livestar, a new iPhone app (Android coming soon) that makes it easy to find the two kinds of recommendations that matter most to many users: friend suggestions and professional rev[...]